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Perhaps your (and Richard's) understanding of poetry is too narrow. There are many schools of thought regarding the purpose of poetry. For example, some say that the point of poetry is to express oneself; others; to reveal truth and beauty. Of course, it can do either or both and many other things as well. All agree that poetry requires extreme concision and precision. These two qualities are also essential for excellent technical writing. Poetry, like good technical writing, also needs to engage readers while leading them to the conclusion that the author intends. Like the best poetry, good technical writing needs to be inexorably truthful. So, just as we can say that good poetry must be concise, precise, engaging, controlling, and truthful, we can say the same for excellent technical writing.

By the way, I agree with your assertion that bad "poetry" (if you can call it poetry) is as ubiquitous as bad tech writing. But again, this is just one additional reason to teach poetry.

Anybody who's gone to open mic night at the spoken word café or thumbed through a lesser literary mag will know that there is AT LEAST as much tremendously awful poetry as there is bad tech writing.

Yes, being able to apply some creative problem-solving skills will improve your output, but knowing how to craft oblique metaphors and pretty wordscapes? Can't see that being useful in a medium where the key is to communicate simply and directly.

> And once again American anti-intellectualism rears its ugly head. The
> poet is one who has mastered the most difficult aspects of language.
> Going back to Plato, most if not all of the greatest prose writers in
> the western intellectual tradition were also poets.
>
> Why would anyone want to keep students away, for any amount of time,
> from the best examples of great writing that our culture has to offer?
> If everyone who wanted to write were trained by a poet, the airwaves
> and internet wouldn't be so full of nonsense. Technical documents
> wouldn't be so poorly written. The problem with commercial writing
> isn't that writers can't master story telling or economy or who, what,
> where, when, why, and how. It is that they have no poetic sense.

I've encountered quite a bit of bad technical documentation over the years. In no case have I ever thought that the problem was lack of poetic sense, imagery, emotions, or self-expression. :-)